Posts Tagged 'Iraq'

You may have noticed the group of students on campus “raising awareness” of the war in Iraq. They’ve read off the names of Americans who have died in Iraq, set up American flags representing the deaths in front of Mead Chapel, and even had Cindy Sheehan come to speak. They advocate immediate withdrawal from Iraq as the best solution.

It’s clear that going to Iraq in the first place was a costly mistake, and Bush shouldn’t be forgiven for that. Fifty-five percent of Americans agree the US should never have gone into Iraq, and that figure is on the rise. Yet, even though the war was a gaff on the administration’s part, we must think of the consequences of withdrawal.
After screwing up Iraq, the US has a responsibility to do whatever it can in the interests of the Iraqi people. I propose that a good start would be to ask the Iraqis what they want the U.S. to do. Recently, BBC did exactly this. In an extensive study, they found that Iraqis do not want the US to pull out; sixty-five percent of Iraqis want the U.S. to stay.

Yes, pulling out may save some American lives, but it would cost tenfold that in Iraqi lives. So far, the war has seen about 3,300 American deaths. But compare that to the 600,000 Iraqis estimated to have been killed during the war, and you wonder why we never hear that number in the American media. Well, I guess it’s understandable that the students setting up the white flags decided to leave out the Iraqi ones.

To withdraw from Iraq would be a massive error. The U.S. is responsible for this mess, now we’ll just have to tough it out and stay, at least while the Iraqis want us to.